There are as many companies out there saying ‘we’re the very best SEO agency in the world’ as there are SEO agencies in the world! How will you know which one is actually the best qualified and suited to your needs with many of these claims out on the web?

As with all things available world, what your organization needs will likely be different from what a different one will need. It could even vary between competitors in exactly the same industry. Your first task for choosing the great SEO agency would be to look at yourself.

links Looking at your company to determine your SEO needs

Your first task is to think about what it is you want to accomplish with your SEO campaign. Unless you have an obvious goal, with measurable successes, your campaign is more prone to fail. This responsibility is on you, not who you hire, so be sure that you are prepared to hire on an SEO company before you achieve this.

Your next task is to think beyond just those three words – seo. Yes, you would like to bring more visitors to your website by obtaining a higher search rank, but how will this happen? Does the company you are considering offer other services such as for example social media consultation, link building, design and copywriting? Having a company on hand that may handle all of this eases your needs to have to go searching for web related companies over and over again.

Talk to your business associates

OK, you know what you should do with your website and you know what services you want to have provided for you. Now you should strat to get real data and information from individuals who really matter: your business contacts.

If you know anyone who has already hired an SEO agency, and gotten great results, you should talk to them and find out what worked, what didn’t and any challenges they faced. This first hand data is more important than any claim you will discover randomly online.

Get examples of past success

Once you have found an excellent SEO agency you should get a quote from them and see what they will have actually accomplished. A portfolio of past clients, who you can contact if you wish, may be the most valuable thing that any reputable SEO firm will need to offer you.

The last point I want to bring up is to be cautious with outrageous claims made at any stage of the procedure such as:

“We guarantee a number one ranking” – this is impossible to guarantee, regardless of how good an SEO agency it really is.
“We won’t alter your website” – then how will they improve SEO? This claim is too good to be true and likely only involves some link building of questionable intent.
“We’ll submit your site to hundreds of search engines.” Who cares? Everyone uses Google anyway! Being put on a few core directories is important, but hundreds? You’re just creating spam.